NOTE: This version of the roster matrix is no longer current. It reflects the 2012 changes from the start of short-season ball though the end of the regular season. It should now be considered a historical reference document. For the active roster matrix starting with the 2012 off-season, click here.

With the short-season minor league schedule now underway, it is time for another refresh of the St. Louis Cardinals system roster matrix. This version will reflect the changes made from the first week of 2012 short-season play. The previous matrix reflects the rosters as they evolved from the end of spring camp until then.

If you are new to the blog and not familiar with the Cardinals organization roster matrix, here is quick summary:

In the first week of 2012 short-season play, the St. Louis Cardinals had 291 players under contract from top to bottom, including a full 40-man roster. The matrix places each one at his current assigned level in the system as well as by position. It is kept updated daily or as transactions occur.

Nowhere else will you find this current and comprehensive single-page view of the entire Cardinals organization.

Don’t be concerned about the order of the players’ names within a team. It doesn’t signify anything.

The players on the 40-man roster are called out in bold.

The short-season pitchers are broken out into returnees and summer 2012 signees. The latter group is either denoted by the round drafted or FA (for free agent) in parens.

At the end are any currently inactive and unassigned players. The final group, 2012 unsigned draftees, is not a part of the signed total.

Full team rosters and player profiles at The Cardinal Nation

Remember that to get detailed profile information on every single one of these 291 Cardinals players, simply check out their free player profiles freshly updated now at The Cardinal Nation.com / Scout.com. You can see bios, photos, videos, articles, news items, links to current season and career stats and much more – everything you need to know about a player in one place.

Click on the following links to be taken to one of the nine team pages at The Cardinal Nation. You can also see rosters and player profiles back to 2004:

Now that you’ve found this page once, remember one of three ways to get back here. Bookmark the page, type “Roster Matrix” in the dark blue search box at the upper right or use the dropdown menu at the top of the page: “Players/Staff” > “Depth Charts/Roster Matrix”.

For details behind past rosters and transactions, check out the earlier versions of the Cardinals organization roster matrix as follows.

We already had Holliday, Jay, and Craig as outfielders who all are above Rasmus, and when Rasmus waa traded what we got in return was instrumental.towards a world championship. Then after the title we added Beltran in the outfield to the other 3.

Much as I like to agree with you, Wes, this time I cannot. No, on a scale of one to ten, the trade was one hundred and ten!

We unloaded a kid who had not wanted to play for the Cards, as admitted by his Dad. We developed a better hitting and fielding CF in Jay, making Rasmus a goner. Colby helped us win a world series by leaving, plus we landed two high draft picks, plus Rzepczynski. By these amazing results, the reality is it turned out to be a tremendous trade, sending TLR into retirement on a wave of glory, while David Freese got himself on a lot of tv shows. Mo looked like a super genius.

Why do the Cardinals seem determined to keep filling the AAA roster with people off the scrap heap?? It seems like all season long, anytime injury has struck the AAA roster, or even call ups, they go out & bring in another roster filler rather than promoting their own. Now we can add Lance Zawadzki & Brock Peterson to the list. Sure would have been nice to see a guy like Jermaine Curtis, who is having another good year at AA get the promotion instead. Curtis even started the year at AAA, and was hitting well, before getting demoted because others were getting healthy, not because of his poor play. He has since earned an all-star berth, and continued to hit above/around .300 for most of the season. He is but one example of a guy being held back by this practice of signing FA’s instead of promoting.

Curtis is not a good fit to a position. He is often DH. Offensively, he is a singles hitter, without speed. There is not a lot of upside, though its great he is contributing at AA.
In contrast, the Cards elevated Rosenthal from QC last year to Springfield this year and now up two more levels to the ML team. Why? He has talent.

Most, but not all, of the 2006 signees will be minor league free agent eligible. Since Medina is currently at instructs, his re-signing makes sense. Not sure if you are a subscriber, but I just posted an article digging into the free agent subject today.